


When I watch the world burn, all I think about is you

by Eloarei



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Apocalypse, Character Death In Dream, Dreams and Nightmares, M/M, Timeline What Timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 22:11:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19732786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eloarei/pseuds/Eloarei
Summary: Angels didn't dream like humans; angels were given signs.





	When I watch the world burn, all I think about is you

How did he get here, at the end of the world?  _ How _ did it come to this, with the war raging around him like tides of fire? Blood splattered the ground, his clothes, misted on the air. Angel, demon, human; it was everywhere.  _ Death _ was everywhere, and there would  _ be _ no more life to make up for it. This was the end.    
  
How did he get here? Failure? Indecision? Cowardice? He could hardly recall the last… the recent past. All he remembered was the ever-present fear looming over him, the knowledge that whatever he had now wouldn’t last for long. Whatever he thought he might  _ want _ to have? Wouldn’t last for long. The end was a truly difficult thing to consider, even for an angel. He hadn’t been there at the start, after all. He didn’t know what that meant, the idea of nothingness, the idea of a day without a tomorrow.    
  
He stood frozen, watching everything burn.  _ Everything. _ Was the Earth not the Earth anymore? Or was he now more than he had been the last six-thousand years? He could see it all, flashes of the devastation in every corner of the globe when he blinked, the destruction spilling out into Heaven and Hell too, coating everything in a tacky, slowly-hardening lacquer of  _ finite. _ And when it was all covered over, only cold infinity could live there.    
  
Despite the hordes of combatants around him, slinging arrows or swords, breathing fire, bending air, rending the very fabric of time because it didn’t matter anymore, brandishing weapons never thought of before or to be seen again, he was alone. Alone with the smoldering corpses that littered the ground around him.    
  
How did he let this happen?    
  
There was someone, he was sure, someone he wanted by his side. Someone who would feel the same horror he was feeling, who would know why he felt so lost when even the dead seemed somehow satisfied. Where…    
  
Where… Where was Crowley?    
  
The battle rang in his ears, not like bells, not like silence, not like the telephone call of an old friend. Not even like the clash of human armies descending upon each other, because they at least left an emptiness in their wake which would be filled again by those who came next. This battle rang like the quiet din of his birth rewinding into itself, the opposite of the warmth of God’s light in his first morning. Not the  _ implosion _ of a star, not  _ even _ a black hole; just… an explosion of life being undone. He closed his eyes.    
  
_ Where is he?  _   
  
The seas, as they said, boiled and turned to blood. The mountains were aflame, lava-scorched. The human cities were Picasso pyramids of twisted metal and rubble, roads mere suggestions of where one might travel. He didn’t need them, when he could see all, be anywhere. He just had to search.    
  
It seemed an eternity that he looked, scoured the world as the fighting went on, the screaming and crying and dying grating against every grain of stardust that made up his nerves. He found everyone, dead. He recognized every person who lay trampled beneath the feet of the struggling exultant warriors, as if he’d known every one, and he mourned them. But still he searched, because the part of him that didn’t  _ know _ this was going to happen was still hoping that in some small way it hadn’t, that in some small corner he would find the one survivor he would recognize above all others, just waiting to be found so they could run away together.    
  
Search. He searched, thinking all the while of every great and terrible and soft and beautiful thing he’d never said or heard or done in regards to Crowley, and the many thoughts and words and actions could almost fill the hot void of the planet with a cold regret dusted in a shimmering starfield of longing. It felt like they could almost extinguish the flames, that he on his lonesome could almost suffocate the fires just with the weight of things left unsaid, if only the panic and furor to find him would calm or abate.    
  
Tongues of flame rose higher, ‘til that was all that was left, even the soldiers slowly sinking to the ground and melting into the molten Earth. And when all was gone, Aziraphale found him. Crowley sat slumped on the ground, wings black as night outstretched behind him like they were trying to escape while his body was tethered to the Earth with pain or maybe apathy. One hand clutched fruitlessly at the floor, fused to what was left of the world by the blood that had dripped and puddled all around him, hardened like amber, or tar. And his head hung low between hunched shoulders, too empty to pray, too tired to try to escape.    
  
Hesitant, Aziraphale stepped forward, in as much as he could step without a body; maybe he had left it behind when Crowley had left his. Maybe it was slumped on the ground somewhere, wings wrapped ‘round itself because he had never considered running. He didn’t reach for the stars, not when all he’d ever known was here.    
  
There was no one left, and there was nothing left in this shell of Crowley, but still he reach out for it. At the ghost of his touch, it crumbled to fine ashes and drifted softly to the ground. Even his remains would not escape the pit that Earth had become, and Aziraphale could not even kneel to scoop the ashes into his hand, for he was nothing as well. He was nothing, trapped here with no one at the end of the world.    
  
_ And this is what will become of you, _ whispered the shadow of a voice as he woke, gasping and shaking, sweating, calling, “Crowley!”    
  
It was the dark of a calm evening, lamp-lit and soft, comforting in its closeness, its normality. He was home in his bookshop, the place he’d made for himself, and Earth was blue and gently turning on its axis. He couldn’t see it all; he could only see the pale light resting on the spines and pages of books, on the warm chestnut browns of shelves and desks. He could not see every person in the world, thank God. There were people milling about in the street, but they minded their own business, and none were screaming and dying, and none were melting, and the only fires were the small flames people held close to their bodies as they lit cigarettes against the suggestion of a storm.    
  
But the echo of the voice rippled through his head, and he knew too well to think that an angel could have dreams as humans do. Not a dream like this. He stumbled to his feet and found his phone and left a message asking the demon to meet him. Then he dressed, wrapped a thick white scarf around his neck in anticipation of chill, and went.    
  
Crowley was there, at the meeting place, and Aziraphale heaved a sigh of relief, low under his breath but heavy.    
  
“What’s up?” Crowley asked. Standing there with his hands in his pockets, looking at best bored, anyone would think he was annoyed to have been called out so late, or so early, but Aziraphale knew him better-- and Crowley knew Aziraphale, so it was okay.    
  
He wasn’t sure what to say. He came closer, maybe just a little closer than he’d have done the day before, and looked the demon over. Wings black as night hid behind the veil of the mundane, but they were there, still soft, still warm, still strong. Still a dark souvenir of his past. His body was fine, as good as it ever was. His eyes behind his glasses were curious and worried. These were things Aziraphale could see, and he didn’t need a dream to show him.    
  
“I’ve seen something,” he told Crowley, the words gently drifting across the small space between them, willed to stay despite the breeze the tousled the edges of his scarf. “It was a dream. A.... a nightmare.”    
  
“Must’ve been bad,” Crowley said, glancing around at the way the trees were beginning to sway. Aziraphale didn’t like a storm, not after Noah, not after seeing what it could do to the world, even with God’s promise. Crowley knew this, knew Aziraphale wouldn’t prefer to go out in one, or what might become one.    
  
Aziraphale nodded. “It was the end of things.  _ All  _ things.” He took another half a step closer, leaving hardly enough space for the wind to whistle between them. “But the worst of it is… I’m sure it wasn’t a dream.”    
  
Crowley looked down at him with an expression a mite shy of a grimace. “We knew it was coming, angel,” he said.    
  
But he couldn’t understand, even with his blessed imagination, and Aziraphale shook his head. “Not like this. If the world must end, if there is truly nothing we can do about it, then so it must. But not like this.”    
  
“No?” Crowley asked. He didn’t seem to know quite what was going on. “Then what do you mean to do about it?”    
  
There was just one thing  _ to _ do. If the world had to end, if there was nothing that could be done to stop it, at very least there was still one thing that would ease his regrets. Unfurling his wings, Aziraphale erased the space between them and gently enveloped Crowley in a cocoon of his arms and downy feathers. He could feel the demon go stiff in shock, sense his night-black wings flutter with suppressed want.    
  
“There’s much that lies unspoken between us,” Aziraphale said to the line of tendon at Crowley’s neck. “I can’t face the end knowing it’s still there, or wondering if you’ll be by my side.”    
  
The tension melted out of Crowley and he ducked his nose into Aziraphale’s hair, and Aziraphale could feel the edges of his black pinions tickle along the innermost joint of his own wings as they completed the circle. “I’ll be by your side,” Crowley said.    
  
They stood in silence a few long moments, the sound of the wind muffled in their sanctuary of feathers. Then the first raindrops came.    
  
“Should we get out of here?” Crowley asked. He knew Aziraphale wasn’t excited to be caught in what came next.    
  
But Aziraphale shook his head, forehead bumping against Crowley’s. “I considered it,” he said. “If you wouldn’t stay, I thought I might. Run, that is. I was hopeless on my own. But if you’re beside me, I- I think I  _ can _ face it. I think we can change things.”    
  
Rivulets ran over the contours of their faces, puddling where they met. Crowley gave a very soft huff of laughter. He said, “I meant we should get out of the rain, angel. Back to your place or something,” and Aziraphale blinked up at him.    
  
“So you  _ will _ stay?”    
  
“That’s what I said,” Crowley said, giving him a look. “Anyway, where would I go without you?”    
  
_ Nowhere, _ Aziraphale hoped. But together they could go anywhere, so they hurried through the rain back to the bookshop, where they spoke close in hushed tones to a soundtrack of thunder, airing all that was unsaid, falling into what was left of the night and knowing they stood a chance against the darkness. 


End file.
